Quotations

"The soul heals with books." Dostoyevsky

Boze Herrington, Library Owl 

@SketchesbyBoze

No one believes me when I say this, but the decline in reading is already having dire consequences for art & culture. The media you loved in your youth—shows, albums, films—was made by artists who were widely read. You will not have that quality of art in a post-literate world.

Jeff Bezos talking to CNBC: "If I do my job right, the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger than the good that I do with my charitable giving."

Despite his war crimes, Trump's most impressive quality nowadays is his sheer unimpressiveness

This is a good comment by Yvan Stoclet. 

The entire thing reads like imperial melodrama written by someone whose understanding of power begins and ends with spectacle. He announces war as though unveiling a product launch, suspends it after appeals from Gulf monarchs, then immediately reasserts the threat so the performance loses none of its testosterone. What emerges is not strength, but a strangely juvenile vision of statesmanship in which diplomacy exists merely as a backdrop for personal grandeur. Even the prose is revealing: every sentence straining to turn geopolitical instability into a portrait of himself.

Former CIA Director for Russia George Beebe talking to Mario Nafwal 3 days ago

- I think the best option for Putin to end the war on the battlefield is not to throw more manpower into the fight. But to take advantage of Russia's superior firepower in the air. And their firepower is simply enormous when it comes to missiles, drones, and glide bombs, which have not yet been fully deployed.
- Are you talking about expanding the list of targets? In Ukraine, they believe that command and decision-making centers are now under threat.
- There are many targets that the Russians have so far avoided hitting. Partly because Ukraine previously had very strong air defense systems. But all of that is in the past, as neither the US nor European allies have any anti-missile systems left to provide to Ukraine. They are not able to produce them in sufficient quantities to make up for the gap in Russia's capabilities.
- In this sense, Ukraine is now very vulnerable.
- Very much so. What else has been holding Putin back? Firstly, he did not want to increase the risks of a direct confrontation with NATO. This consideration has so far prevented him from using all his firepower. Secondly, he does not want to close the door to a compromise and would like to normalize relations with the US. He knows that if he turns Ukraine into a complete ruin, Trump will simply have no political opportunity to normalize relations.
- And do you think he is capable of turning Ukraine into a complete ruin?
- There's no doubt about it. He absolutely is. Even without resorting to nuclear weapons, which he would least want to use. If we look at the agglomeration of Ukrainian fortified cities in the Donetsk region, they are very difficult to capture with infantry and assault troops. It would be a bloody massacre, which would entail huge human and time losses. But the Russians have the technical capability to simply wipe these cities off the face of the earth. And Ukraine has practically nothing to prevent this.

Peter Oborne is a British Conservative or Tory. Pro Arab Tories used to be more common than Zionist ones

Peter says that he hasn't changed. His party has.  

He is right. Margaret Thatcher strongly  condemned Israeli war crimes such as the Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982, when Lebanese Christians with Israeli complicity murdered thousands of Arabs. 

So did Reagan.

How different is Sir Keir Starmer, the human rights lawyer, who instructed the RAF to help the IDF massacre tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians in Gaza. 

Rishi Sunak did the same and so would Kemi Bedenoch but at least they are just too guileless to question what MI6 told them and not interested in the Middle East or the definition of war crimes. Starmer is an utter hypocrite. 

Selling illegal wars

"Britain’s most senior and respected journalists passed on government lies uncritically, very often adding fresh fabrications of their own." Peter Oborne in an excellent essay. 

“To my everlasting regret, I strongly supported the Iraq invasion, in person and in print. I had become a recipient of what we now know to have been sheer disinformation about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and his purported ‘links’ with al-Qaeda – claims put out by [opposition figure] Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. I took these stories seriously because they were corroborated by ‘off-the-record’ intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic.” David Rose in an article in the New Statesman published four years after the invasion quoted by Peter Oborne.

According to Peter Oborne both the Labour and Conservative Friends of Israel lobby groups “work closely” with the Israeli embassy in London.

"The Palestinian issue is now in the shadow of everyone’s attention because of the situation in the Persian Gulf around Iran." Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Alas.

"Forget about Russia, the real threat to America is Israel and the Israel lobby". I saw this yesterday attributed to Julian Assange, but he didn't say this.

"During his summit with the Chinese president last week, Trump also suggested that the US, China and Russia should co-operate against the International Criminal Court, according to people familiar with the talks." The Financial Times today

Scott Ritter talking to Judge Napolitano last night

This is an excellent podcast. Scott Ritter thinks Israel and the UAE have no future.

Judge Napolitano

What do you believe President Trump hoped to achieve last week in China? And what did he achieve?

Scott Ritter

I think in order to answer that we have to go back to what he hoped to achieve in April when the trip was first scheduled. And right, this was part of a power play that was crafted by Scott Bessant, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth, that sought to confront Xi Jinping with the overwhelming strength of American military, economic, and political power.

I believe he was hoping to show up with the figurative heads of Venezuela and Iran in his hands to throw them on the table in front of Xi and say, "We control your oil and if you want us to turn the oil back on you have to start playing ball with us". He was going to, you know, push on trade. He was going to push on the Pacific, Taiwan, this was going to be a full frontal diplomatic assault backed by the threat of economic power and the indirect threat of military power. 

Vladimir Putin visited China on 4 February 2022

Ray McGovern, ex-CIA man, thinks at that meeting Xi gave his nihil obstat for Russia invading Ukraine. 

What will the two decide when they meet tomorrow?

This will be Putin's 23rd visit to China, by the way. He has been there more than any other country except Belarus and Kazahstan. 

I doubt if he considers Belarus a real country any more than Ukraine. Kazakhstan is much more real.

Brian Berletic's cynical view of America is that of many Romanians and it sounds as if he's about right

▪️The US has a long-established pattern of meeting with China (and also Russia), agreeing in principle to cooperation and stability, while in practice committing to continued war, proxy war, encroachment, and containment of China; 

▪️The recent US-China meeting in China included little substance and concluded with not only unchanged US geopolitical objectives centered on containing China, but the continued escalation of blockades, wars, and proxy wars waged in pursuit of these objectives; 

▪️On the issue of Taiwan, US President Trump continues the same pattern of agreeing in principle with China over the US' own "one China" policy, while in practice continuing to undermine China's sovereignty over the island province and the transformation of the island province into a battering ram to use against the rest of China.

Drop Site News is one of the few reliable news sources today. This allegation is hugely important, shocking but unsurprising.

 

Quotations

Honoré de Balzac in his 1843 novel La Muse du Département:"When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues."

Napoleon Bonaparte: "One should always prefer to make mistakes of ambition rather than sloth."

Sir John Betjeman said that when the end of the world came he would like to be in the haberdashery department of Peter Jones “because nothing bad could ever happen there".

Bernadine Dohrn was right that the US government is the real terrorist

I have written several posts about the SDS leader and Weather Underground bomber Bernadine Dohrn, who told a meeting that she admired Charles Manson for sticking a fork into the heavily-pregnant Sharon Tate's belly, something she considered a revolutionary act.

I am certainly no admirer of hers but rereading this post I see she was quite right when she said in 2010 in an interview:


"The real terrorist is the American government, state terrorism unleashed against the world."


By then Obama, who began his political career with a fund raising meeting in her house, was US President.


He authorised drones to kill people in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia etc without any authority from the UN or Congress.

Hundreds of civilians were killed, perhaps more than 800, one an American citizen.

I don't know how the number of children he killed compares with the number killed by Donald Trump.

Donald Trump does not try to hide his terrorism but rather glories in it.

WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump issued a fresh warning to Iran on May 17, saying it had to move quickly towards a peace deal or “there won’t be anything left of them”.

Washington, locked in conflict with Tehran since US and Israeli forces launched major strikes on the Islamic republic beginning Feb 28, has struggled to break an impasse and make any progress towards ending a war that has shaken the Middle East and sent energy prices climbing.

“For Iran, the clock is ticking, and they better get moving, fast, or there won’t be anything left of them,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Time is of the essence!”

Dusk

 

The holocaust in Gaza and the rape of the Palestinians, metaphorical and literal

Omar Bartov, Israeli historian of the holocaust, said in late 2023  said it was very likely that war crimes and crimes against humanity were happening in Gaza, but concluded then that "there is no proof that genocide is taking place". 

'Then in 2025, he sent shock waves through academic and legal circles by reversing his position, publishing an essay in the New York Times headlined, "I'm a genocide scholar. I know it when I see it."'

Here he is interviewed alongside the famous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who also reluctantly came to the conclusion that a genocide was happening.

I am not a scholar and do not have an opinion about whether the Israeli Jews committed genocide. 

It is enough to say they are responsible for a holocaust.

Holocaust, of course, means burnt sacrifice.

It is important too to say up to 600,000 Arabs died in Gaza and certainly many more than the 80,000 that Hamas and Israel said.

Talking about the artificial fuss over the story in the New York Times about dogs trained to rape Arab prisoners in Israeli gaols (you read it here first), Professor Bartov has an excellent answer. 

The Israeli prosecutor and press have reported that a number of prisoners have been raped. It's very well known in Israel. The Israeli public is indifferent or in many cases happy about this.

"Generally speaking, apart from some articles in Ha'aretz and in +972, no one is speaking out. The physicians' association in Israel has not spoken out. The bar association in Israel has not spoken out. Academic associations have not spoken out. University presidents have not. The media is not really interested in that. That is what you see is a brutalization of Israeli society, a kind of joy at this kind of horror that is happening all over Israeli jails."


Gideon Levy adds: "Nicholas Kristof is a great journalist. I believe in every word he writes but he's not the only one as Omar just mentioned and the only way to to fight it for Israel is to attack the messenger instead of looking upon ourselves, looking in the mirror, realize that in our jails there is a real barbaric catastrophe and to draw the lessons out of it."

22 minutes, 18 seco

The dogs are a detail, the many rapes are the story and the torture and the murders.

"Zelensky is one of the biggest obstacles to peace today”: Ukrainian president’s former press secretary speaks out

Here is a very brief summary in writing of Iuliia Mendel's interview with Tucker Carlson.

I have not been following the negative stories about Zelensky very much, I am ashamed to confess. The Nato compliant Western media hides most of them but not this one, which tells me European governments are giving up on Zelensky.

Brian Berletic

"Europe has already suffered what is likely irreversible political and economic damage from its political capture by the US and now its growing energy dependence on the US.

Asia risks being likewise weakened by growing energy dependence on the US, making political capture much more likely by the US, then being transformed into a united front - this time against China rather than Russia - and used to wage war on the US’ behalf at the expense of the people, peace, and prosperity of Asia. "

 His latest video is here.

What a sleazy, incompetent, unprincipled and cruel US administration, aided by craven and unprincipled satellites

The Trump wanted to save Western civilisation but failed. 

Instead his behaviour reveals to an astonished world that America is an empire in great decline. 

It is worthy of the ironic pen of Edward Gibbon.

Donald Trump bought up to a $1 million worth of Nvidia stock on January 6, a week before the Commerce Department broke with its policy hitherto and approved the sale of Nvidia chips to China. Shortly after this news came out but attracted little attention in the media, he told reporters on the plane flying back from Peking that China "chose not to" approve purchases of the chips because "they want to develop their own."  

How sleazy this administration is, the most corrupt in American history. 

Here is a long list of very disturbing stories about insider dealing and corruption by Isaac Saul. 

Trump: The US had no interest in attacking Iran

 

Bloodstained media

Please actively distrust everything in the traditional media. Left-wing journalism and news sites are the best sources of information.  

Especially distrust the media coverage of Israel and Russia. 

"Israel’s ‘War to the Root’ May Unravel America"

Quotations from "Israel’s ‘War to the Root’ May Unravel America" by Alastair Crooke, 14 May 2026

Both Trump’s Iran war and the closely connected Israeli war for Jewish hegemony across the Middle East (termed ‘Permanent Security’ in Israeli military vernacular) are unravelling fast.

Iran is standing defiant in the face of Trump and Israel’s threats, leaving Trump gambling the entire US economy and its global strategic standing on conjuring up a decisive ‘win’ over Iran — however deceitful and Pyrrhic that ‘win’ might prove to be.

China is watching the USA commit suicide

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, talking about Donald Trump's rather pointless visit to China for which no preparation seems to have been done, says China's policy is to watch the United States committing suicide.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor a couple of years ago said this was Russia’s policy. He said this talking about illegal immigration.